At 10am on April 19th a cannon is going to fire in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and I am going to start running.
A couple of hours later I will stop running when I get to Boston Public Library. Someone will hand me a bottle of water, put a hunk of metal around my neck and say “congratulations.” I will smile and nod back an exhausted thank-you.
For the next few days I will walk gingerly and have trouble going down stairs. I will consider those days some of the best of the year.
In 2010 the Boston Athletic Association will hold the 114th running of the Boston Marathon and I will be there.
This on-line story (I dislike the word “blog”) will be an account of my preparation for that day.
I am writing for two reasons:
1. New Years day is an epic holiday of belly-button-staring and each year that passes I am amazed at how much I forget. This will be an attempt to build a narrative of the first four months of 2010 that can be referenced in 2020 when I want to laugh at my younger self.
2. I have narcissistic delusions and think other people may find this interesting as well.
Before I begin, however, I would like to make three disclaimers:
1. I don't work well with training plans, so don't expect this to be a training manual. – I've read all the books, seen all the data and watched people succeed by following rigorous training plans. I love Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics dudes – I get it. Rely on intuition and “experience” alone and you will fail. Ignore scientific process at your own peril.
I still hate training plans though. I wake up each day with an open mind as it pertains to my run. If my legs are dead, I run slow. If my legs feel good, I run a bit faster. I rarely go to the track and rarely do structured workouts of any kind. I can't stand runs shorter than 45 minutes in duration and I rarely run longer than 2 hours. I'm thinking that some of this will have to change this year... but I am going to do my best to stay as unstructured as possible. That means lots of Fartlek runs, hill repeats and sprints with arbitrary mailbox and street-light “finish lines.”
2. I am not going to even try to track things like weekly mileage totals, heart rates, blood chemistry profiles or REM sleep cycles. – This builds upon the previous disclaimer. I don't keep track of these things for the same reasons I don't do drugs. I know I would get addicted.
In the past I have put the “numbers” on a pedestal and knelt before them. It wasn't pretty.
For some reason I had the sense that as long as I ran X number of miles at Y pace in training I would come out with a PR on race day. I was literally running to exhaustion week after week and forgetting that the whole point of accumulating those “numbers” was to become a healthier and faster human being.
So, while I am going to try to track the duration and effort level of each run, all other numbers and figures will be thrown in to make a point or bring context to a day's activity. (If you see me kissing a Garmin wristwatch and scribbling in a spiral notebook with the Runner's World logo on it... you'll know I've fallen off the wagon) My goal is to get faster, not have an impressive log.
3. This isn't going to be a “Dear Diary” exercise. – My goal is to tell a story about how I prepared for the Boston Marathon. My stories and insights will be almost exclusively about running. The other aspects of my life are not that interesting and you probably don't want to read about them. It is my hope that a reader can see between the lines and see how my performing the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other day after day frames the rest of my existence – but that is not guaranteed.
*Audible 4th disclaimer*
4. This written account may be long-winded and uninteresting. – Sorry.
So, consider yourself warned and enjoy.
